Contents

Once the many loanwords from its immediate neighbors, Majang and Shakicho, are removed, the wordlists collected show a significant number of Koman words side by side with a larger number of words with no obvious external relationships. The tentative grammar so far collected offers few obviously convincing external similarities. On this basis, Fleming (1991) has classified Shabo as Nilo-Saharan and, within Nilo-Saharan, as nearest to Koman, while Ehret (1995)[unreliable source?] has argued that neither Nilo-Saharan nor Afro-Asiatic present any convincing similarities, seeing the Koman words as early loans and saying that "once the evidence of these influences is identified and separated out, there is little else to suggest that Shabo might belong to the Nilo-Saharan family". He thus regards it as an Africanisolate. Anbessa & Unseth consider it Nilo-Saharan, but present little by way of argument for their position, and no detail on its position within the family. Schnoebelen (2009) in his phylogenetic analysis agrees with Ehret that Shabo is best treated as an isolate, but does not exclude the possibility of contradicting evidence gained from applying the comparative method (which still needs to be done). Blench (2010), maintains that Shabo does pattern with the Nilo-Saharan family, and that recent data on Gumuz helped tie the languages together.

The pronouns "I" and "he" have been compared to Surmic languages; however, there are also resemblances in the pronouns with the Gunza language (Bender 1983). The gender distinctions made are unusual for Africa.

Negation is by adding the particle be after the verb or noun negated: gumu be "(it is) not (a) stick", ʔam be-gea "he will not come" ("come not-?"). Negative forms in b are widespread in Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic languages.

Plurals are optional; when used, they are formed with a word yɛɛro afterwards.

There is a suffix -ka which sometimes mark the direct object, e.g. upa kaan-ik ye "a man saw a dog" ("man dog saw"), but also has many other uses. A similar suffix is found in many Eastern Sudanic languages, but there is it specifically accusative.